Report — Ryan Cass

Composer/Performer Orchestration Research Ensemble Report

Ryan Cass
April 14, 2020

The opportunity to participate in the ACTOR project this year has been a very rewarding, educational, and enjoyable effort. Working on the pieces and playing with the CORE ensemble has helped me grow as a player by providing me with opportunities to improve my extended techniques, explore new sonic territory, and learn more about the other instruments of the ensemble. It has also given me more insight into the process of composing new music and learning how to provide feedback to the composer as a performer on how to make the parts easier to interpret and perform.

Reproducing Non-Instrumental Sounds

Many of the sounds we had to try and replicate in the early phases of the project were from sources which were not instrumental or even traditionally musical. I found that it was often helpful to change my ways of playing the instrument even if what I was doing would normally be considered improper by classical training. I found that sounds which could be considered “harsh” or perhaps “aggressive” (growled, distorted, very aggressively tongued ) can be recreated much more accurately if you’re willing to temporarily put aside your classical training. For example, things like cheek-puffing, playing “from the throat”, or pushing the sound are typically thought of as bad and not encouraged in brass playing (and for good reasons). But these can all be used to help create the extreme sounds that were sometimes required in this project. I would say that what is really important is being aware of when using these improper techniques is helpful and being careful so you don’t let them become habits that creep into normal playing.

Changing My Conception Of “Good Sound”

I found it helpful to redefine for myself what “good sound” is. For me, this involved moving away from classical ideals of good sound (broad, dark sound, clear articulation, in tune, etc) and instead thinking more about accuracy. By accuracy I am referring to how well I was able to recreate sounds that the composers wanted us to produce, whether it was a verbal description of a sound or emulating a recorded sound. After making this mental switch it was much easier for me to be open and receptive to different sound ideas and allowed me to focus more on creating sound textures and gestures which the composers were looking for.

We are taught ways to play Bruckner, Bartok, Beethoven, and so on but when confronted with newly composed music, it is easy to default to playing with a very generic and boring approach to the instrument. By this I mean using a “middle of the road” articulation and generally staying in ​mf ​dynamic range, usually as a way to try and “play it safe”. The collaborative process has allowed me to better understand each composer individually and tailor my approach to playing much in the same way that I automatically do for playing the music of established composers.

Creating Complex Sound Textures

Working with the CORE ensemble members has been very helpful in improving my understanding of the other instruments. By trying to better my understanding of their respective mechanics and extended techniques, I found I was better able to conceptualize complex sounds outside of class and rehearsal time and more quickly imagine potential solutions to orchestration problems during our meetings. This was especially helpful when trying to create many of the complex sound textures that the composers wanted. By breaking the sound textures down into simpler parts, we could quickly think up different ways of achieving the desired sound and the more I learned about the other instruments, the more I was able to contribute in this regard.

Improving My Playing Techniques

The interactive process was very beneficial for improving several of my extended techniques. I have struggled with things such as multiphonics, flutter tonguing, and certains rip/harmonic gliss. patterns in the past, but having other people to bounce ideas off of and give suggestions was helpful for either learning the techniques or finding alternative ones to use as “cheats”. Most important was having the composers and Guillaume give their thoughts on the sounds I was making since they are on the other side of my bell. It is easy for brass players to get caught up in what they hear from their instrument and forget that we are hearing ourselves play from behind the bell which is largely indirect sound. Having immediate feedback from people in front of me was very helpful for honing in on the exact timbre or gesture that I had to produce.

As the music written for the CORE ensemble developed it progressively got more challenging and pushed more boundaries for my playing. The ranges became more extreme, pedal F to high D and everything in between. The music also greatly tested my soft dynamic playing and intonation control. Working through music with all of these challenges has greatly improved my consistency and precision for all ranges of the instrument.

Creating New Gear

The ACTOR seminar also allowed me to collaborate with Alex on new gear, specifically three trombone mutes. Alex had the idea to create mutes out of styrofoam to try and create new sounds. The collaboration between composer/designer and player feedback has been very fun and rewarding. The process involved trying different sizes and shapes of styrofoam and cardboard mute with holes reamed through them at various diameters and tapers. I found testing these different variants to be very interesting since every parameter changes how the tuning lines up and which register responds most readily. We ended up with three mutes, each with its own sound and response character.

One of the most interesting parts of this process to me was finding the optimal way of keeping the mutes in place in the bell of the instrument and also finding the best place to place and spacing to put them. Cork, elastic bands, sticky tack, and also nothing at all. Each had strengths and weaknesses, but we finally settled on the sticky tack.

Developments In Notation

One of the challenges that consistently arose was how should the composers notate certain ideas for us so that they may be easily readable and ideally understood by other people. For the trombone parts, Alex came up with a simple way of showing precisely how much to open or close mutes by expanding the usual “o” and “+” symbols into a consistent circular shape with the close amount indicated by how much of the circle is darkened. The system is intuitive and applicable to Alex’s mutes as well and the normal plungers and harmons.

Pedram’s piece contains a lot of sections where there are multiple types of indications going on at the same time. Normal notation with articulation and mute markings combined with text and lines that indicate either harmonic gliss. or rapid back-and-forth slide movement. Lines are often used in trombone parts to indicate vibrato, glissando and harmonic gliss. but it is sometimes unclear which is being asked. Context becomes important in determining which is required. Pedram’s system uses a continuously changing diagonal line for rapid slide movement and a similar line with circles over it for harmonic gliss. It is easy to understand and differentiate regardless of context.